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EU's renewable energy consumption accounts for 15 pct in 2013: Eurostat

Xinhua, March 10, 2015 Adjust font size:

The share of energy from renewable sources in gross final consumption of energy reached 15 percent in the European Union (EU) in 2013, compared with that of 8.3 percent in 2004, according to figures released by EU's statistical office Eurostat.

The share of renewable sources in gross final consumption of energy grew significantly in all member states since 2004, with 13 of them having at least doubled their share of renewable energy over the last 10 years, said Eurostat.

Sweden had the highest share of energy from renewable sources in its gross final consumption of energy in 2013 at 52.1 percent, ahead of Latvia, Finland and Austria. In contrast, the lowest proportions of renewable energy were found in Luxembourg at 3.6 percent, Malta at 3.8 percent, and the Netherlands at 4.5 percent.

The share of renewable energy in gross final consumption of energy was one of the headline indicators of the Europe 2020 strategy, and the EU set the target at 20 percent to be reached by 2020. Each EU member state had its own Europe 2020 target.

According to Eurostat, three out of the 28 EU member states had already reached the level required to meet their national 2020 targets, which were Bulgaria, Estonia and Sweden. Moreover, Lithuania, Romania and Italy were less than 0.5 percentage points from their 2020 targets.

However, some of the member states, including the United Kingdom with 9.9 percentage points from reaching its national 2020 objective, the Netherlands at 9.5 percentage points, France at 8.8 percentage points and Ireland at 8.2 percentage points, were the furthest away from their target. Endit